About Johanna Mestorf Academy

A new sustainable institution, the Johanna Mestorf Academy (JMA), has
been founded as a central institution of Kiel University in December
2011. It is named after Johanna Mestorf (1828-1909), who conducted
archaeological and ethnographic research in Kiel and was the first
female museum director (1891) and professor (1899) in Germany/Prussia.
The JMA promotes research and education pertaining to the field of
‘Societal, Environmental, Cultural Change’ (Kiel SECC), which is one of
the four research foci of CAU.

The Graduate School ‘Human Development in
Landscapes’ is at the core of both Johanna Mestorf Academy and Kiel
SECC. The most important partner of the Graduate School is the ‘Centre for
Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology’ (ZBSA) of Schloss Gottorf,
Schleswig, which is involved in the founding of the JMA. This
longstanding cooperation is regulated by an official cooperation
agreement, which is reinforced by the JMA and reflected directly in the
organisational structure.

Objectives

Members of the JMA will carry out research within all disciplines
related to aspects of Social-Environmental Change and Landscape
Archaeology listed below:

The aims of the JMA

to strengthen interdisciplinary research within the CAU and with national and international partners;

to develop joint projects;

to enhance cooperation between university and non-university research;

to focus on research and education competence;

to develop and further research orientated academic training for young researchers;

to support PhD students, including career advice;

to develop, setup and maintain research infrastructure and technical platforms;

to gather mutual information on research projects and results;

to promote knowledge transfer and public outreach.

CAU employs a sophisticated infrastructural scheme where resources
and expertise supporting research are organised in platforms and
governed by the research foci. The new JMA will therefore provide the
governance for the further development of the infrastructures and the GS
in a long-term perspective.

The Johanna Mestorf Academy was established at the plenary meeting of
the Graduate School on December 1st, 2011, and installed as a central
institution by the Senate of Kiel University on December 14th. The
academic members of the Graduate School voted in favour of being first
members of the JMA. They appointed the newly elected Executive Board of
the Graduate School as the first Executive Board of the JMA.
Furthermore, they appointed the first Directors of the JMA – Johannes
Müller as speaker of the GS and Claus von Carnap-Bornheim as Director of
the Foundation for State Museums of Schleswig-Holstein at Schloss
Gottorf.

Structure

The Johanna-Mestorf-Academy joins expertise from a wide range of disciplines, as represented by 16 institutes from five CAU Faculties, the Schloss Gottorf Archaeological State Museum, and the Center of Baltic and Scnadinavian Archaeology (ZBSA).Currently the staff of the JMA consists of 25 Principal Investigators, an additional 22 Investigators, 14 scientists and a substantial number of non-scientific members of the participating institutes, three Junior Professors, a Scientific Coordinator, and three postdoctoral fellows. The School’s organisational structure ensures cross-institutional and autonomous decisions while being fully embedded within the existing university structures.